Category: Sleeping Beauty’s Daughters

It turns out you can do a Goodreads Giveaway for a couple of months after a book is published — so I am! This time, of course, it’s for a hardcover copy of Sleeping Beauty’s Daughters. And I’ll sign it, too. So click on the widget below and sign up. Good luck!

The Books of Wonder Great Middle-Grade Reads event was so much fun! Joining me at the table were three other great middle-grade authors:

Dan Poblocki, presenting his really scary new book, The Haunting of Gabriel Ashe. And Morgan Keyes, with the second book in her fascinating Darkbeast series. And, all the way from Australia, Catherine Jinks, presenting How to Catch a Bogle, set in Victorian England.

And as always, owner Peter Glassman and the enthusiastic and well-prepared bookstore staff were the perfect hosts. They made us feel just a little bit like rock stars — a pretty amazing feat, considering the real life of children’s book writers…

Not everyone is fortunate enough to have a bookstore as wonderful as Oblong Books and Records nearby, nor a bookstore owner like Suzanna Hermans, who offered to host a launch party for Sleeping Beauty’s Daughters.

Nor an agent as fabulous as Jennifer Laughran, who came up with the idea for the party,

made the glorious cake pops,

and created quill pens as giveaways for book buyers. (If you want to know why quill pens…you’ll just have to read the book.)

Lucky me — it was an incredible way to send my book out into the world!

Today the book is available in your local bookstores and libraries — or if it isn’t, let your bookseller or librarian know you’d like to read it! You can also order it yourself; just click on the cover.

I’m doing a blog tour for the book. The schedule is here. Check out the reviews, guest posts, and giveaways!

And if you’re in the Hudson Valley area, or you’d like an excuse to visit: Oblong Books and Records in Rhinebeck, NY, is hosting a book launch on Saturday, August 31st, at 6 p.m. There will be cake and cookies, giveaways and prizes. You can pre-order signed copies here.

Last but not least, Princess of the Wild Swans is now available in paperback! Click on the cover to order.

#28: Lord, confound this surly sister, blight her brow with blotch and blister/cramp her larynx, lung and liver, in her guts a galling give her. — J. M. Synge

#27: How can an intelligent woman with any delicacy so humiliate a sister? — Leo Tolstoy(Anna Karenina)

#26: Bless you, my darling, and remember you are always in the heart – oh tucked so close there is no chance of escape – of your sister. — Katherine Mansfield

#25: Sister, dear sister, come home … — Jessamyn West

#24: For there is no friend like a sister/in calm or stormy weather/to cheer one on the tedious way/to fetch one if one goes astray/to lift one if one totters down/to strengthen whilst one stands. — Christina G. Rossetti

#23: Help one another, is part of the religion of sisterhood. — Louisa May Alcott

#22: A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves – a special kind of double. — Toni Morrison

#21: Sisterly love is, of all sentiments, the most abstract. Nature does not grant it any functions. — Ugo Betti

#20:Be kind to thy sister. Not many may know the depths of true sisterly love. — Margaret Courtney

#19: There can be no situation in life in which the conversation of my dear sister will not administer some comfort to me. — Mary Montagu

#18: The mildest, drowsiest sister has been known to turn tiger if her sibling is in trouble. — Clara Ortega

#17: I would like more sisters, that the taking out of one, might not leave such stillness. — Emily Dickinson

#16: Sisters is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship. — Margaret Mead

#15: We acquire friends and we make enemies, but our sisters come with the territory. — Evelyn Loeb

#14: We must stem the tide of malice, and pour into the wounded bosoms of each other, the balm of sisterly consolation. — Jane Austen

#13: Never let an angry sister comb your hair. – Patricia McCann

#12: My sister! My sweet sister! If a name dearer and purer were, it should be thine. — Lord Byron

#11: I had known, from the time when I could speak, that my sister, in her capricious and violent coercion, was unjust to me. — Charles Dickens (Great Expectations)

#10: It’s a great comfort to have an artistic sister. — Louisa May Alcott

#9: Never praise a sister to a sister; in hope of your compliments reaching the proper ears. — Rudyard Kipling

#8: With a sister, one can never fear that success will go to one’s head. — Charlotte Gray

#7: Is solace anywhere more comforting than in the arms of sisters? — Alice Walker

#6: Two scorpions living in the same hole will get along better than two sisters in the same house. — Arabian Proverb

#5: You know full well as I do the value of sisters’ affections: There is nothing like it in this world. — Charlotte Bronte

Are you a sister? Do you have a sister? Have you ever longed for a sister — or longed to lock your sister in a closet so she would leave you in peace?

Sleeping Beauty’s Daughters is, among other things, a story about sisters. That’s always a complex relationship, as you know if you answered Yes to any of the questions above. And since it’s one month until the book’s publication, I’ve decided to hold a contest dedicated to sisters. It will go like this:

♦Each day until August 27th, I’ll post a quotation about sisters.

♦To be entered in the contest, you can post your own sister quote, or simply write a comment on this post.

♦On the 27th, I’ll pick a random winner for a SIGNED HARDCOVER copy of Sleeping Beauty’sDaughters!

(One caveat: I’ve only found about 20 good quotes so far. So if I like one of yours, I get to use it!)

My lovely publicist, Olivia deLeon, has just sent me a big box of ARCs of Sleeping Beauty’s Daughters — and you are the beneficiary! By which I mean, you can enter a contest on Goodreads to win one of two ARCs of the book.

My wonderful local bookstore, Oblong Books, is hosting a book launch party for Sleeping Beauty’s Daughters, about which I’ll write far more as the date (August 31) approaches. But if you can’t make it to the launch, you can still get a signed book — Oblong is accepting pre-orders for signed copies of all my books!

♦If you’d like to pre-order a signed copy of Sleeping Beauty’s Daughters, click here.

♦If you’d like to pre-order a signed copy of the paperback edition of Princess of the Wild Swans, click here.

♦If you’d like to pre-order a signed copy of the paperback edition of A True Princess, click here.

♦If you’d like to pre-order a signed copy of the paperback edition of The Thirteenth Princess, click here.

It’s my turn to do The Next Big Thing Blog Hop! If you don’t already know, it’s an idea originating in Australia that celebrates what children’s/YA writers are working on or what they have coming up next. I was tagged to participate by the wonderful Shelby Bach, one of the very first manuscript readers for my very first children’s book, The Thirteenth Princess. She has her own new title coming out in July, Of Witches and Wind. You can read about it here. And she’s asked me to answer The Next Big Thing questions about my own upcoming book.

What is the working title of your next book?

The working — and final — title is Sleeping Beauty’s Daughters. Remarkably, this book has had the same title since its first moment. Here’s its beautiful cover!

Where did the idea come from for the book?

It came from a brainstorming session with my then-editor, Maria Gomez. I had a contract for Princess of the Wild Swans and an “as-yet-unnamed fairy tale,” and we were tossing ideas around at lunch. She was the one who said, “What about something like…Sleeping Beauty’s Daughters?” I fell in love with the title, and the ideas sprang from that. Not the way I usually work!

What genre does your book fall under?

Middle grade fantasy, or fairy-tale retelling. For 8-12 year olds (or older, or younger) who love fairy tales and adventure.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

I used to imagine various Fannings playing princesses in the film versions of my books, but they just keep growing up. Now I think Quvenzhane Wallis would make a fabulous Luna — she’s the difficult younger sister in the book. And if she has an older sister…well, there’s my Aurora!

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

What if Sleeping Beauty’s terrible curse was passed on to her children?

Who is publishing your book?

HarperCollins Children’s Books.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

Probably about six months. But that was really just a start. Characters came and went, changed ages and hair colors, moved up and down in rank; settings emerged from the sea and disappeared again…only the plot stayed the same.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

This one isn’t really a retelling of a fairy tale, it’s an original tale. But it’s inspired by “Sleeping Beauty,” so I’ll mention some of the fairy tale retellings I admire enormously — Shannon Hale’s The Goose Girl, Robin McKinley’s Beauty, and Edith Pattou’s East. I don’t know if Sleeping Beauty’s Daughters can compare, but it aspires.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

My sister and our relationship were a large part of the story’s inspiration. Not that we’re exactly like Luna and Aurora (I hope not, anyway — I’d be the extremely difficult Luna in our version), but I think the book is as much about sisters as it is about magic. I wanted to show the ups and downs that all sisters have in their relationships. My princesses torment each other, but they also have each others’ backs.

(This is a very old and kind of scary publicity photo for a book my sister and I wrote together. We had our makeup professionally done. Can you tell? I think that the fact that we co-authored books and didn’t kill each other is a testament to the bonds of sisterhood.)

What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

There’s magic, a curse, good fairies and bad, princesses, a cute boy, a voyage and a quest, danger, and sisters. I hope that list includes something to intrigue any reader!

Thanks for checking out my new book! Be sure to stop by the blog of Erin Jade Lange, author of the critically acclaimed Butter, who allowed me to tag her for next week (Wednesday, March 20). Her blog is here. And check out my co-blogger for the day, Mindee Arnett. And in addition, when I asked to tag Shelley Moore Thomas, author of the fabulous Seven Tales of Trinket, she told me that she’d already been tagged and asked to tag me instead! You can read her Next Big Thing answers here.